An Analysis of American Psycho by Hitchcock as Being Degrading Towards Women

Analysis, Pages 3 (630 words)

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Alfred Hitchcock's famoud film, American Psycho, delves into the dark world of corporate greed, drawing parallels between Patrick Bateman's gruesome deeds and the heartless nature of Wall Street. The movie's enigmatic conclusion suggests Bateman's growing moral awareness, as he grapples with the consequences of his behavior while the world around him remains apathetic. While watching the film, I found myself wanting to get up and leave, because it was so graphically disturbing and degrading to women. Now that I have thought about it, maybe it was so disturbing because it was something I could relate to.

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What do I mean by this? The jealousy, the greed, and the lust every human being experiences it at some point in their lifetime. At first, I thought that Bateman was just a purely sick and twisted individual, with an uncanny ability to succumb to these emotions so willingly, almost as if he had no self-control. Furthermore, why should a man so physically intriguing and pulsating with sexual energy such as himself feel the need to engage with prostitutes and other off-color sexual scenarios, while he has a fianc? Why does he yearn to kill so readily, as if he cant survive without the warm sticky human blood of his victim in his mouth or under his fingertips? Why does it all seem so realistic? Because it is in his head, that is.

None of this is physically real its all played out in his subconscious. Whenever someone seems to become superior to him in reality whether it be they have a better business card, apartment, or girl, he needs to deal with his outrages.

He does so through every mental, sexual, or murder scenario that he congeals in his brain. As far as the detective goes, he is also a figment of Batemans imagination he puts him there to play the part of his conscience, to keep himself in check, to make the scenario that much more interesting and keep it from actually becoming a reality. But the catcher here is that no matter how weird this all seems, we all have experienced it at some point in our lives.

This is the exact reason why I think that this movie was so shocking to me. Its in-your-face way of exposing the human psyche bothers people more than the actually killing and maiming, because it is so horrifying to actually visualize some scenes that your minds eye has already played out. Not that Ive ever killed someone with a chainsaw, or dreamed up a wild sexual fantasy like Batemans, but there have been instances when someone would just get under my skin to the point where I wished I could pull a Bateman and nailgun them through the head. However, these thoughts are dismissed after a few seconds, and usually never to surface again. The visual portrayal of Batemans minds eye is what actually affected people, not the blood and gore, although it was pretty horrifying to see it.

In actually, maybe we all are American Psychos. We all experience greed and jealousy at some point, and maybe we all quietly have a little running game in our minds, picking off that person who cut us off on the Parkway, beheading that girl who stole your boyfriend, or slice-and-dicing the lunch lady who forgot to give you extra French fries. We have to deal with that, though. Whatever you do, dont get to the point where you cant decipher reality from fiction and you confess all of your secret rituals, like Bateman did. Not only did he look like a fool, he looked like a real jerk for admitting that he killed a friend of his who was really away on business. All in all, just keep the psychotic tendencies to yourself, please.